[R] Data Clean of Character variables

[Uwe Ligges]

Chris Anderson wrote:
> I am new to R, and I need to do some simple data cleaning.
> In the example below I have 164 rows of data with a missing value. I want to convert these missing to unknown while keeping the other values as is. 
> 
> summary(ABIClinical$HasSkinBreakdown)
>              no unknown     yes 
>     164     914     163     178 
> 
> When I did the following code: 
>  ABIClinical$HasSkinBreakdown<-ifelse(ABIClinical$HasSkinBreakdown=='',"unknown",ABIClinical$HasSkinBreakdown)


If it is already a factor you can say:

ABIClinical$HasSkinBreakdown[ABIClinical$HasSkinBreakdown==""] <- "unknown"

You probably thought about the point to code something as "unknown" 
rather than NA...

Uwe Ligges





> I get the following:
> summary(ABIClinical$HasSkinBreakdown)
>    Length     Class      Mode 
>      1419 character character 
> 
> How do I get results as in my first statement,but with the missing values converted to "unknown"?
>  
> 
> 
> Chris Anderson
> 707.315.8486
> www.sassydeals4u.com
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